


Would you give me the gift / Of a second first kiss?

by Dooiney_Oie



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Canon Non-Binary Character, Canon compliant....... for now, Getting Back Together, Other, Peter nureyev is a snake and I love him so much, Set somewhere between the end of man in glass and shadows on the ship pt.1, Spoilers for episode s03e14: Juno Steel and the Mega-Ultrabots of Cyberjustice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24822847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dooiney_Oie/pseuds/Dooiney_Oie
Summary: (And I know I've kissed you before butI didn't do it rightCan I try again try again try againTry again and again and againAnd again and again and again)
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 25
Kudos: 155





	Would you give me the gift / Of a second first kiss?

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as something CUTE and FLUFFY bc if the writers were not going to give us a second first kiss then I would do it Myself (I say this with love) and then ultrabots pt. 2 came out and it suddenly got FULL OF ANGST TERMITES. Mr nureyev I love you but you'd BETTER not go through with whatever you're doing. God
> 
> Summary quote is from pink by mitski EDIT: pink in the night by mitski..... I have never listened to the song lol I just like the quote (I know it's overused but..... idc lmao)
> 
> Warning for one blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to sarah steel/past child abuse, literally like barely anything but I'm listing it just in case. If anyone has any other warnings to suggest please let me know!
> 
> Anyway enjoy

It's late by the time the knock hits his door - very late, enough that even despite his usual sleeping habits Peter is contemplating calling it a night and letting his wailing eyes win out for a rest. The moment he hears it, though, he's glad that he didn't, and when the door opens to reveal a guilty-looking Juno Steel silhouetted in the low light, that feeling multiplies tenfold.

"Hey," the outline says - well, more mumbles, really. Peter gestures him inside as he sits up and sets his comms off to the side, offers the space next to him on the edge of the bed.

"I was beginning to think you weren't coming tonight."

Juno only shrugs at him. He slouches across the room and slumps down in the space Peter had offered. "Yeah. Well."

There's silence, for a moment, where one might have expected an apology, or an explanation. Instead, Juno stares at the floor, blinking slowly with his eye dull and reddened. "Are... you alright, Juno? You seem... well, tired, for one thing."

"Gee, thanks," Juno huffs, petulant. A bad night, then - and perhaps a bad day, too, down on the surface of the nearby backwater moon.

Peter stays quiet, waits. The pattern is familiar by now; the wall goes up... and then it comes down again with a sigh. "No, you're right, sorry. I am tired - didn't sleep well."

"Do you... want to talk about it?"

Juno finally turns his head, and gives him a slightly sardonic look, but also a grateful one. "Maybe another night."

Then, silence, again. Peter drums his fingers against his leg.

"So, then..."

"Can I ask you something?" Juno blurts before Peter can finish asking if he had anything else in mind to discuss. Clearly, he does. He cringes slightly when Peter blinks at him, and starts fiddling with his shirt hem. "It's not - I promise it's not anything bad, but you don't have to answer if you don't want to, either."

"Oh," Peter says, taken a little aback. "Well, I... suppose I won't know how I feel about it until I hear it, will I? Ask away."

Juno nods slightly, but doesn't say anything just yet. He's working his thumb into the palm of his opposite hand, brow creased and eye intent on the motion. "What was your first impression?" he asks after a minute. "When we met, I mean, and - you can be honest. Don't need to sugarcoat it or anything."

Peter hesitates, for perhaps just a moment too long. "Well..."

"You really don't have to answer," Juno says quickly - too quickly, really, "I just - I don't know. Was... thinking about it." He shakes his head and shoves his hands underneath his thighs instead. "Actually, y'know what, let's just forget about it. Doesn't matter."

"No - no, I only... it's just not very flattering on my end, that's all." Peter works his teeth lightly over his lip, clasps his hands between his knees. "To be entirely honest, my first thought was that you were convenient," he says with a small shrug. "I needed an in, and - there you were. I didn't have much time for research, that first time around, so I was hoping for an easy mark, and, well..."

"Didn't do much to prove you wrong by crawling right out of a window, huh?" Juno offers wryly, but Peter shakes his head, eyes on the opposite wall.

"No, quite to the contrary - I realised it would be much harder than I thought."

He can feel Juno frowning at him. "Seriously?"

"Mmn, those pants looked very good on you. It was very distracting."

"I - hey, I'm being serious, here!" Juno complains, after a moment of indignant sputtering, but Peter only splays his hands.

"As am I! You asked for honesty, no sugar-coating, and that is my answer - you had your leg hiked halfway over a windowsill, and I had had a long, difficult night and was rather hard pressed to look anywhere workplace appropriate."

Juno buries his face in his hands and collapses back onto the bed with a groan.

"I take it that isn't the answer you wanted."

"It's not-- It doesn't matter," Juno grumbles, rolling onto his side - towards him, at least, though his face is half-buried in the bed. "I don't know what I wanted." 

"Hm." Peter leans back onto his palms. "Then, why did you ask?"

He waits. Juno curls his legs up onto the bed and mumbles something completely unintelligible.

"Come again?"

"Cause I had a dream about it last night!" Juno repeats, now too loud. His eye darts towards the room's shared wall with Jet's cabin before he continues in a mumble, "Kind of. I mean, it started off with that case, and then I think you turned into a rabbit? And I was chasing you around the sewers, and - Mick kept calling me trying to sell me old phone books, or something, so I kept losing track, and then I was back in my apartment, and--" He lets out a frustrated groan and turns his face back into the mattress. "Doesn't matter. I just had a stupid dream, that's all."

"But it's unsettled you."

Juno shifts, folds his arms tighter around himself. "I don't know about _unsettled_." 

"Then _what_ , Juno?" Peter asks, exasperated and confused. He pushes his glasses up and rubs at the bridge of his nose with a sigh. "I - I'm sorry if I'm being curt, but - I don't understand what you're looking for here."

"Who says I'm looking for anything?" Juno mutters.

"Juno--"

"I don't know!" The words start out as a snap and finish as a whine. "I don't know, I just..."

There's a pause while he curls up even further into himself, hugging his arms tighter around his chest. "I guess, I just... wondered what you even saw, back then. Why you'd even make the effort. I was a mess, and an asshole, and I only had two friends 'cause they were the only ones I hadn't managed to shake yet, I hadn't been in a relationship in years because nobody wanted to put up with my bullshit, and then you waltzed in looking like _that_ and I couldn't tell if you were actually interested or if I just had something you wanted, you - you stole from me, and gave me the best kiss of my entire life and I couldn't stop thinking about it for--"

He stops abruptly, looking like a burglar caught in a spotlight, and it's only when he tries to speak himself that Peter realises his own mouth has turned dry as sand. "For?"

Juno makes an uncomfortable noise, still not looking at him. He swallows, and mumbles, "Since. Haven't... stopped thinking about it... since."

"...Ah."

The silence stretches out again, taking its time like a freshly-woken cat, slinking out of its bag just like all the other mewling, clamouring feelings that Peter has been trying to stifle for so long, now. Even after Zolotovna's gala, even after he realised that his love for Juno had never really left him, that it runs too deep and too loud to bury, he's only ever paddled the edges of it, knowing that wading further would be nothing but foolish, given his circumstances. He cares for Juno too much already; letting himself get more entangled will only make all of this hurt more, at the end of it. For him and Juno both. This plan had been so much easier to stomach before he knew that Juno would be a part of it, before he knew he still _cared_. Betraying his childhood idols is one thing, nauseating as it is, but _him_...

Because the problem _is_ Juno. His careful pushing at their boundaries, the quiet determination he has to rebuild the bridges between them that is at once too gentle to rebuff and too forceful to resist. The way he lights up at every gesture of good will, every small touch, and the way that he seems to be spilling that warm glow into Peter as well without even trying.

Within the privacy of his own mind, he sighs. Maybe he's already in deeper than he thought. A sailor to a siren's song, so sweet on his ears and impossible to shut out. How could he, when the promise of a life with Juno Steel is right there for the taking? How could he ever stop himself from coveting every scrap of that life that he can squirrel away, safely hidden from the powers keeping this damned leash tightening around his neck?

"...I am _very_ good at compartmentalising, Juno, you know that," he sighs eventually, throat tight. "But, I'll be honest, that box was... very hard to keep closed, even for me. It... made things difficult, for a while."

Juno looks simultaneously very pleased with that response, and rather sheepish. "I don't really know what to say to that," he admits. "I'm sorry? You're welcome?"

Peter lets out a low chuckle, shakes his head. "No apology necessary. It was a good memory, all else aside."

"...Was?" Juno asks, minefield-careful. Peter feels more than lets his expression soften.

"Is," he corrects quietly, and then, with another breath, "Although, I... recognise now that I wasn't treating you fairly, expected far too much from you too quickly, and, ah..." He clears his throat and absently corrals a stray lock of hair back to its proper place behind his ear. "Well, I wouldn't kiss you under false pretenses again. I have too much respect for you for that."

Juno rewards him with a soft, wry laugh - no bitterness in it, only a little teasing. "And you didn't back then?"

Peter flushes. Unbelievable, the frequency at which the people on this ship manage to embarrass him, and Juno especially. "Well, I - in a way, but..." He sighs and drops backwards onto the bed, feeling like a petulant teen but unable to bring himself to care. "I wasn't actually thinking about you at all, I realise that now; I was thinking about myself. How you made _me_ feel, what _I_ wanted. You were a prize that I could steal away, if I only had enough skill." He turns his face away. "I'm... sorry for that. If I could do it again..."

"You'd do it different?" Juno finishes for him, voice soft. "Yeah, me too."

For a minute, they're just lying next to each other, very carefully not touching. It's something close to excruciating. And then Juno sits up, and looks cautiously back at him over his shoulder.

"We could--" He stops, flicks his eye away and back again, fingers worrying at the sheets. "I - unless you think it's too soon, or - it's fine if you don't want to at all, but - we could. Do it... different."

Peter is entirely unprepared for this. He'd told himself he wouldn't get involved, Juno hadn't seemed to want to push, they'd been dancing around the subject for weeks, and - and--

"N-- Never mind, sorry, it was a stupid--"

"I think I'd like that," he says - too honest, too selfish, greedy for as much of this life as he can have. It tugs his heart, the way Juno unfurls out of himself again with just a little encouragement, like a flower in sunlight. He's grown so much. Peter so desperately wants to grow with him - to grow together, to continue to curl around each other for the rest of their lives. He wants it, even if it's untenable.

"You - you would?" Juno asks, his eye wide. Peter nods, just a little, and one of those nervous smiles flickers across his face. "It doesn't... have to mean anything. Not if you don't want it to."

"Do _you_ want it to?" Peter counters - force of habit; he hadn't _meant_ to deflect, but the deed is done now. Juno is already ducking his head.

"I, um... I mean... if _you_..." He laughs, shortly, and drops his head into his hands. "I sound like a teenager. Yeah, I would. I really would."

Peter smiles. It's a small, vulnerable thing - unbefitting of a thief, the kind that only Juno can ever coax out of him. "I think I would, too."

That flicker of a smile on Juno's face flares brighter for a moment before it fades again, as he pushes himself backwards and turns to lean over him, biting his lip. He fills Peter's whole range of vision, haloed by the overhead lights, beautiful as any goddess even as his brow suddenly creases in worry.

"You... know you don't have to do this, right? It's really okay if you don't."

Peter can't help but laugh, just a little. It's probably unintentional, but the echo is there regardless. "Oh, Juno, but of course I do," he replies, but drops the levity when he sees uncertainty start to crowd further onto Juno's face, lifting his hand to cup his cheek. "Please."

(Coward. Fool. Thief. Selfish down to the bone, through to the marrow, aren't you, Peter?)

Juno swallows, and then he leans down, and for once Peter ignores that little voice in the back of his mind reminding him that the weight around his neck accumulates more interest with every breath he takes, that letting himself be pulled into Juno's orbit again is only going to complicate things. For once, he lets go. Surrenders his thoughts and allows himself to get lost in the feeling of warm lips on his, warm skin under his fingers, and - and warm water, splashing crystalline against his cheek as Juno jerks away from him with a gasp.

"Shit," he sniffs, wiping furiously at his eye and nose as he turns away with hunched shoulders. "Sorry, I - god, way to ruin a moment, huh?" He draws his legs up to his chest and cuffs at his face with the inside of his forearm a few more times before dropping his head to his knees, muttering to himself a barely-audible " _idiot_."

Peter pushes himself up after him, feeling that abominably persistent wrinkle forming between his eyebrows as they draw together. They've... discussed some of the ways that Juno can start to spiral. The self-doubt, self-loathing, the inclination to turn an oncoming storm of guilt inwards and let it batter what it will. Soft words admitting, s _he died decades ago, but her voice in my head, telling me I'm worthless? That never went away_.

"Juno," he asks gently. "What are you thinking?"

Juno lets out a harsh, shuddering sigh. "That I can't do anything right."

"And... we've talked about that. About what the captain told you."

There's another stretch of silence, and then Juno takes a deep breath and nods, palming at his eye. "...Yeah. Yeah. _Negative self-talk_." He sniffs, and sighs again. "I - I did ruin it, though. Sorry."

"Juno, look at me."

Reluctantly, Juno turns, shoulders still defensively raised until his eye actually settles on Peter's running eyeliner and smeared foundation, and he drops them with a soft, "Oh."

A laugh forces its way up Peter's throat - he feels ridiculous, and probably doesn't look much better. "You didn't ruin anything, at least not for me," he says, and reaches down next to the bed for a tissue to dab at his face with before passing the box to Juno; he keeps it where they can get it for a reason, after all. "For my part, I don't think there's any way you could have."

It had been everything he'd missed and more, after all. For all of his experience in seducing marks of all kinds... well, seducing is just the word, isn't it? It's a performance, at best. His libido might have been in it, sometimes, but his heart certainly wasn't. There's never been any swooping rush of excitement in his stomach, any buzzing in his fingertips, any bloom of warmth in his chest - those sensations are reserved only for Juno. The only man he has ever met who can set his every nerve alight by merely brushing his fingers. And all that's besides one additional fact that Peter is just now realising: that Juno has never actually kissed him before. Those precious few times back on Mars, it had been Peter pulling him in, leaning forward, making that first move. And Juno had been receptive, true - Peter would never dream of forcing himself on someone unwilling, least of all him - but he had only ever met him in the middle, at most. Never asked, never reached out, never freely gave what Peter had wanted so badly.

And now here they are. And Juno is offering everything out for the taking, and yet...

" _Ugh_."

When Peter looks over, Juno is fussing with the tie on his eyepatch with one hand and a grimace, the other hand over his eye. His other patches are a bit more robust, but this one is softer, silk-lined - Rita had upcycled it out of an old tie, he believes, and Juno seems quite fond of wearing it around the ship. In this instance, however, the fabric appears to be ill-suited to its task. "Sorry, it's just, all gross and damp, it's... ugh."

He tosses the patch to one side with another sniff, but keeps his hand where it is, covering his missing eye. It doesn't look particularly comfortable or sustainable, holding his arm up like that, but it seems like he's intending to just... keep it there. Like he's hiding.

"Can... I see?" Peter asks, trying to channel the feather-light touch of a safe-cracker into his voice instead. Juno's nose wrinkles.

"I don't think you want to."

"I think I do."

"It's really not pretty," Juno insists. He's biting his lip, the corners of his mouth turned sharply downwards in discomfort. Peter shuffles closer.

"Juno, it's alright if you don't _want_ to show me, but... I don't want you to feel like you _can't_ , either. I - if--"

He stalls for a second, at a loss for words, which he _hates_ \- his words have always been as faithful a weapon to him as his knives, have saved his skin a thousand times over, and yet here in this room, during conversations like these, he always seems to fumble every one of them like an amateur. Put that down to a lack of practise in real honesty, he supposes.

"If we're going to pursue this, Juno, I want to see all of you - even the parts you don't like," is what he eventually settles on, though it still feels like it's falling shy of the mark. "Maybe that's selfish of me, but I want to."

Juno watches him for a long moment, assessing him with that sharp, dark gaze that Peter adores so much. Then he averts his eye. "Just promise me you're not gonna scream and run away," he mumbles.

"I would never," Peter promises, and holds that sincerity for another moment before letting out a soft laugh, and reaching out for his free hand. "Honestly, Juno, I don't know if I'm capable of running away from you again."

It's true. He doesn't, not any more. All of this would be so much easier if he did.

Juno still looks uncertain, but he releases his lip from between his teeth. "Whatever," he sighs, fingers softening in his grip. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

He half-moves his hand, but stalls again almost immediately, and so Peter reaches out instead to take ahold of it. He makes sure to pull gently, to give Juno enough time to change his mind if he really wants to, but he doesn't put up any resistance. After that, Peter's first and foremost concern is to bring that warm, rough hand to his mouth to kiss its knuckles, and only once that's done, softly and slowly, does he actually allow himself to look.

Juno had been right; the sight is... not what one would typically consider _pretty_. The socket is sunken and lumpy, absolutely buried in scar tissue at this point, and the unsupported eyelid twitches when he blinks, which he's doing a lot of in an attempt to keep his good eye clear. Peter hasn't seen it up close - or at all, actually - since Miasma, and now that he has again, he can't help but feel a twinge of familiar guilt.

He reaches out to gently trace around it, fingers above and then thumb underneath. "It... doesn't hurt, does it?"

Juno shakes his head, mouth twisting. "Not any more. Just looks like hell and means I shoot like my blood's half whiskey."

"It's not that bad," Peter tells him, trying to soothe with words and touch in equal measure, "Personally, I think it adds to your charm - you've always been so ruggedly handsome, it's quite--"

" _Well maybe sometimes I--!_ "

Juno gets halfway through jerking away before he freezes up like a drone with locked servos, and then his whole body sags forwards, head in his hands. "Sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap, I just..."

Cautiously, Peter leans in again. He places a hand on Juno's back. "It's alright. Go on."

Juno's lips purse, and he goes tense around the eyes. He gives a single-shouldered shrug as he turns away. "Maybe sometimes I don't wanna be rugged," he sniffs, "Maybe sometimes I wanna be pretty, and not a walking heap of scar tissue, and not look like I've been beaten to hell every day of my life."

"Juno..."

"I know it's stupid."

"It isn't--"

"I'm fine with it," Juno insists, but his voice breaks slightly and he sighs to himself. "Mostly. Don't get me wrong, I know I can look _good_ , but sometimes I just... want to look _nice_. I started collecting scars before I was in double digits, so I never really got the chance to look any way except..."

He trails off with a small shrug, gesturing vaguely at his face - the broken nose, missing eye, skin that's now not just scarred, but red and damaged over his cheeks from when he'd walked out into the Martian desert alone. All his fraught history written into every fibre of him, indelible as sculpture.

And, therefore, a work of art, in Peter's opinion. Whatever Juno might think of himself.

Peter takes his chin in his hand, gently tilts his head up and presses a lingering kiss to his right eyebrow, over the empty socket, and wraps his arms around his back when Juno drops his head forward against his collarbone, resting his nose in his curls. "Juno, you're beautiful," he assures. "The most beautiful person I've ever met. And not just beautiful, but brilliant, and bold, and - a thousand other things besides. I've thought so ever since I first saw you climbing out that window."

Juno huffs, but it has a wobbly edge to it. "That's not fair. Rules say you gotta be honest."

"I'm being nothing less."

"Then you've got bad taste."

"A completely unfounded accusation. You wound me, darling, truly," Peter says with a pout, playing gently with the short, downy hair at the nape of Juno's neck, until Juno lets out a wet snort of a laugh, followed by a few small giggles, and he pulls back. "What?"

"The pet names, I just--"

Peter falters - an unusual thing, for him, to feel wrong-footed, but becoming more and more common recently. It's... almost comforting, though, in a way, to know that he can stumble every so often without the world falling down around his ears. Around Juno, at least. Still, "You don't like them?" 

"No!" Juno says quickly, and then even faster, "I mean - yes, I - I mean you're fine, they're - good." He ducks his head under Peter's curious look, fiddling with an earring. "I just - I know I always acted like I hated it, back when - y'know, the whole - _before_ , but I think it was just 'cause I didn't wanna admit that I liked, um... how it felt. A lot, actually. Just wanted to... clear that up."

And just like that, the world balances again. Peter smiles - or maybe it's more of a smirk. "I see. I'll have to keep that in mind."

Juno shoves an elbow under his ribs, but he's smiling, too. After a moment, he drops his cheek against his shoulder.

"Always kinda thought my name was dumb, too, actually. Resented it, for a long time, but, uh..." He clears his throat, awkward. "I like it when, uh... when you say it."

His weight is soft and warm at every point of contact, and yet as always leaves Peter desperate for more, so he wraps an arm around his waist. "Well, Juno," he says quietly. "It's a good thing I like saying it, then, isn't it?"

The way Juno smiles at him for that... it solidifies something in his mind that he's half-known for weeks, now. He has to find another way out. Any way he can, any route that he can forge to avoid putting that smile out along the way, he has to find it.

For now, though, there's the two of them, and there's a quiet room, and there's a sprawling vista of potentiality stretching out ahead of them.

"You know, there's not... a limit, on do-overs," Peter points out quietly, one finger tapping against a wrinkle in the bedsheets. Juno's eye darts up to him.

"No?"

"Not on my end, no."

They look at each other for a moment. Juno wets his lips.

"I mean... I could probably do better--"

"Myself, as well - not my best performance, I don't think--"

"Better just - try it again, just to be sure--"

"Yes, I think that would be best." Peter's not sure when they got so close again, but he's definitely not complaining.

"Agreed," Juno breathes against his lips, and then they're both otherwise preoccupied and not saying much of anything any more. 

He has to find another way. For this, if nothing else.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a kudos or a comment for me to enjoy too 💕


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